I believe ~220 guilds killed Kil'jaeden before 3.0 back in Burning Crusade and 88 guilds got a Kel'Thuzad kill before Burning Crusade dropped.

Wrath was certainly the time when raiding had the most players.

Well yes, compared to Classic + TBC the future had more players and raiders.

But as for guilds clearing end expansion bosses, you have to realize that classic had a pure linear gear progression system that basically required you to acquire previous tier before getting new tier, and they were also 40man raids, and TBC also had a linear gear progression system until the Sunwell was released and vendors were unlocked, and even then I'm not sure how easy it was to upgrade and/or how many upgrades you could get as I was extremely busy once the Sunwell patch came out.

I'm sure many players capable of clearing BWL/AQ40/Naxx 40 were stuck with the "MC Curse" where their guild just stayed in MC, and Vael in BWL was known as the "guild killer" for a very long time for many guilds that attempted BWL.

A big thing holding back raiders on KT was the gear check(s). You needed x tanks with x gear for four horsemen (amazing fight, only problem was the taunt mechanic on it) and new raiders had a very hard time gearing up to do the hardest tier.

So it seems that most of the replies here are saying that the competition in the 25 man race is the same as it was in ICC 25 heroic?

Remember in WOLTK 25 man raiding was the pinnacle, it was where all your top guilds and players played at the time. There was no shortage of skilled players wanting to push the progress envelope especially since the sub numbers had ballooned to over 12 million.

Since the start of Cataclysm 10 and 25s were made equal and new potential skilled players had 2 choices now and not filtered into 25 man raiding because it was the only way to go. Now Asian guilds are part of a seperate race dilluting things even further.
Subs are down to 7.7 million and everyone is saying the competition for WFs is the same?

The fact that 25M have lost numbers beacuse it's no longer absolutely necessary? I was in a regular 10man guild during ICC, who managed to clear 12/12 HC by the end of it (a week or two after 4.0 hit IIRC), but we still had to go find pugs to do 25N/HC in order to get the best gear. It was even worse during ToC since it required juggling 4 lockouts (and we were 3-nights per week raiders).

We were thrilled when Cata hit and we could obtain the best gear for our classes without sacrificing one or more raid nights to pugging 25mans.

Have you even read what I said? I didn't write anywhere that raiding didn't require much time back then. All I said was that there was a lot more competition in BC and Wrath, which can't really be denied and that you needed more skill than you do now, because of the said stronger competition. Of course you also had to invest time back then, but you couldn't make the top 10 or 20 by only investing time, as you can now

The skill cap was far lower in TBC/Wrath than it is now. Healers didn't have to manage mana and in most cases spammed AOE's nonstop. Tanks had very little active mitigation and stacked either avoidance or stamina while being pummeled with heals so you weren't instantly gibbed. DPS still had rotations instead of priorities and were very simple for the majority of classes. Rogues could macro it into 1 button. That was skill right?

Now we have all our class mechanics, resource management and bosses with 10 different abilities and 2-3 phases to memorize. There's a reason why it takes more time to learn.

The skill cap was far lower in TBC/Wrath than it is now. Healers didn't have to manage mana and in most cases spammed AOE's nonstop. Tanks had very little active mitigation and stacked either avoidance or stamina while being pummeled with heals so you weren't instantly gibbed. DPS still had rotations instead of priorities and were very simple for the majority of classes. Rogues could macro it into 1 button. That was skill right?

Now we have all our class mechanics, resource management and bosses with 10 different abilities and 2-3 phases to memorize. There's a reason why it takes more time to learn.

Lol at "rogues could macro it to 1 button"

Why do people have to turn something that could make sense into a pile of turd?

Now we have all our class mechanics, resource management and bosses with 10 different abilities and 2-3 phases to memorize. There's a reason why it takes more time to learn.

He's saying the skill level has flattened out, and you can get into the top 10-20 simply by raiding more.

You're saying that the skill cap is so high these days that guilds have to spend so much more time working on bosses because they're harder to learn, that's why they raid more.

I'd say you're both wrong. Assuming all other parts are equal raiding more will almost always result in killing a boss faster than not raiding, so if you want to kill a boss faster, spend more time on it.

A lot of great players and officers of these top guilds quit because they were personally disgusted with blizzard making 10s and 25s equal and this lead to the downfall of many guilds and leaving skilled players less and less guilds to move into. Guilds like Method have benefitted from the downfall of other top guilds by having a sound management team and getting these top players that wanted to carry on raiding at a high level.

So much bullshit... all those Hardcore Guilds didnt disband because of 10man raids, they disbanded because there are other things in life than raiding and wow has lost importance for lots of people over time.